Could Someone Give me Advice on Optimizing Production in Civilization VI?

[elija6266]

Hello there,

I have been playing Civ VI for a while now and I'm looking to optimize my production strategy. I usually play on Emperor difficulty and tend to struggle with keeping up with production in the mid to late game, especially when it comes to building and maintaining a strong military while also developing my cities.

I typically focus on building a few key districts in each city, such as Industrial Zones and Commercial Hubs, to boost production and gold income. I also prioritize researching technologies and civics that provide production bonuses and try to settle my cities in locations with access to strategic resources.

However, despite these efforts, I often find myself falling behind in production compared to the AI opponents. I am wondering if there are any specific strategies or tips that more experienced players can share to help me improve my production efficiency. Are there certain city layouts or district placements that work particularly well for maximizing production? Are there any key wonders or policies that I should prioritize to boost production?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-vi-industrialization-and-economic-power.641447/

Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help and assistance.

 

[InsidiousMage]

One, you do need to build improvements, which you don't mention outside of strategic resources. Settling a city with eventual access to three mines and four lumber mills is going to generate more production than a city with one or strategic resources. Two, make sure you are using policy cards that boost production. And three, watch this video.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Two quick things I learned from Potato McWhiskey's videos (I like his videos, but that's just my personal preference) --

1. Mine the hills around your cities early. The boost in production for the first few eras is significant. As you conquer and found more cities, mines are also helpful.
2. Chop (or clear, harvest) bonus resources. He does it much more often than I do, with dramatic results. For strategic resources, yes, build the improvements to develop them. For luxury resources, build the improvements to develop them. But he recommends chopping/removing bonus resources

A follow-up question, if I may -- what do you want production *for*, in which part of the game?
When going for a domination victory, yes, you will need more production to produce units in the Renaissance and Industrial Eras. But promoting units requires resources (gold and/or strategics), not so much production.
When going for a religious victory, you need faith more than production.
When going for a diplomatic victory, you will need a few very productive cities to produce the wonders that grant victory points, but it's less important to have improved production across the empire.
When going for a science victory, you will need high production in a few cities, namely, the ones that will build spaceports and space projects. Other cities can produce builders to be sent to the spaceport cities.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Apocalypse mode - Hyper-yields.

You can pretty easily get tiles to have 50+ production.

 

[Disgustipated]

I usually try to work on adjacency bonuses for industrial zones. Then slot in the Craftsman policy card, later 5 year plan. I like IZ's since I like the great engineers. If it is wonders you are after, try to pick up the wonder boosting ones. There are so many great engineers I like in this game. Korolev for the space race is always nice. I also build the Mauselium since it's a pretty easy wonder to snag, and gives your great engineers an extra charge. This is all viable on Emperor. It's a little harder on Immortal and deity since you have to prioritize campus districts more. In that case, often only the core cities get IZ's.

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

Industrial Zones are great, but your Mines and Lumber Mills are the backbone.

Then slot in the Craftsman policy card, later 5 year plan.

I want to add that Coal Power Plants will also yield Production equal to this doubled adjacency. This can be ridiculous with the right setup!

Also, don't underestimate the bonus Amenities can give you (and on that note, Kilwa Kisawani too!)

Without treading on the same ground as everyone else, I'd like to mention that coastal cities can be unexpected Production powerhouses in the midgame. Shipyards in Harbors yield Production equal to the Harbor's adjacency bonus, which will be doubled by corresponding policy cards. When you consider the Golden Age dedication Free Inquiry (which grants Science equal to Harbor and Commercial Hub's adjacency), settling on the coast can actually be very worthwhile in a Science game!

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Apocalypse mode - Hyper-yields.

You can pretty easily get tiles to have 50+ production.

This just teaches some very bad habits as it's essentially cheating through an unintended exploit. It's also on a game mode that many people don't play with, so I generally wouldn't recommend this to someone who explicitly wants to improve his play.

 

[blackbutterfly]

...it's essentially cheating through an unintended exploit. It's also on a game mode that many people don't play with, so I generally wouldn't recommend this.

Cheating?! How dare you?!

It is an exploit yes, but not of the bug variety.

You do have to work pretty hard to get those late game yields:

1. You cannot chop forest! (Something that very much appeals to my indigenous sensibilities). This is breaking 4X strategy 101: chop.
2. You have to use Soothsayers to set forest on fire. They cost faith.
3. You have to prioritize participating in the Appease the Gods competition. And win (to get the extra Soothsayer promotion and a free Soothsayer).
4. Beeline Conservation. (Or play Vietnam) and rewild. Or plant forests.
   (Prioritize rewilding corridors to connect swaths of forest to make a larger whole forest).

I mean in comparison to say Unifier Qin exploit in Zombies mode, this is pretty tame TBH.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Your question is very general and really hard to answer, so I'll ask you a few questions instead before I give a more detailed answer:

1. What do you need this production for?
2. How much production do you need on a per city basis? And why?

Remember that production is only a means to an end, it doesnt by itself help you win anything.

That being said, I see one particular quote which suggests to me that you are at least partially spending your production wrong:

building and maintaining a strong military while also developing my cities.

You should essentially almost never build (as in, spending production) a (land) army in the mid game or later.
Building early units in the ancient/classical era for rushing purposes is fine, but after that you should almost never hard build another military land unit.
There are several reasons for this:

1. You should keep your early (ancient/classical) era units alive and instead upgrade them. Upgrading to the newest tech level is a lot cheaper than building units, and nearly always the best option.
2. You can essentially get land units for free through faith, by purchasing them once you have built the Grand Master's Chapel. Faith is a very, very cheap resource considering that you can get a lot of it through many, and the price of military units is generally quite low. If you ever pillage or have some decent faith economy, you can virtually forget about ever building a military unit again. This frees up a ton of production that you don't have to spend on military in your games.

 

[blackbutterfly]

This just teaches some very bad habits...

Smoking is a bad habit.

Preserving trees instead of chopping them is hardly a "bad habit"

In fact, to the contrary, chopping trees, in an exploitationist, capitalist(?) colonialism that is arguably the "bad habit".
On the Marvel's Midnight Suns discord there's discussion about the latest episode of X-Men '97 and how it alludes to the crime of Manifest Destiny and European settlement of the Americas...they chopped America's forests and turned the mid-west into a dust bowl.

As a sci-fi fan, for me anything that brings to light current events (or difficult conversations) is super.
On that basis, Anton Strenger's contribution to Civ VI in the form of the Climate System is my favourite. Tops.

Particularly as a person of indigenous origin.

I like that there is what you call an "exploit" which turns on its head traditionally accepted de-facto strategy of chopping trees in Civ.

 

[Bibor]

If you want production, your population needs to be actively working mines or other production tiles (lumbermills etc.). I know this might sound obvious, but it isn't. Industrial zones with coal plants might be your next best production booster. Not having these might be the reason why your output suffers in mid/late game. Booster cards are obviously important. Slot in a production card and do your production in "waves". Civ6 is actively promoting commie 5-year plan gameplay ))

When founding or capturing a city, I suggest designating it for one of two roles: early-game production OR late game production. But not both.

Early game production is for those nice sites where you have a lot of 2:2 (or better) hexes and where you can quickly grow to size 4 and crank out early game things.
Late game production cities need a lot of investment: they need to be grown, sometimes slowly, and production hexes might need a lot of border pops and fiddling. Once grown, however, these can work a lot of production hexes.

Once you have your production megacities, you can grow your early production cities to catch up.

The first paradigm, though, "If you want production, your population needs to be actively working mines or other production tiles", never goes away.

Magnus chopping is extremely powerful. It's best done by having a swarm of workers, like locusts, move from city to city. Forests, jungles, marshes, all these can be absorbed into adjacent cities to speed up the growth process. I don't have the exact numbers, but a pristine forest location can chop-in a spaceport (and then some) in one turn.

What the Civ franchise has taught me is a very valuable lesson: to understand the opportunity and time value of assets (in this case, production). Having 4 production now is exponentially more worth than having it available later.

 

[UWHabs]

There's different strategies to employ too.
If you're a civ that has good bonuses to industrial zones or encourages them, then really planning them out can be huge. Use map tacks to plot aqueducts, dams, etc... and you should be able to routinely get a +6 or +7 industrial zone in some spots. Combined with Crasftsmen, you can really get a lot of production out of them.

The next thing to pay attention to is making sure your cities have some production tiles to use. Sometimes you do actually want to keep a couple forests for lumber mills. But not all of them - forests on hills should almost always be chopped. Jungles should be harvested ASAP.

And then yeah, your best bet otherwise is to chop and harvest. Especially with Magnus, move Magnus to a city, chop 3-4 jungle tiles, which both gets you some early infrastructure but also immediately pops the city up to like size 4-5. That way you can work a few tiles and get the next stuff, and is the best way to get a new city up. It's also a good reminder that it doesn't really matter how many mines a city can work, if it doesn't have the population to actually work them, they're pretty useless. Sometimes you can get too focused on production you forget that you need to feed them too. Even sometimes if you have the food to support but you're only growing at +1 food per turn, chopping to immediately grow the pop can have a nice bonus.

The other big production boost is through faith and gold. Don't discount it. Get as much of that as you can, and then turn that into builders, units, great people, etc... If you have like 1k gold to spend when you build a new city, you can buy a lumber mill/granary/monument/builder/etc... right away, and that helps it get online faster too. Or just being able to buy that shipyard or factory when they get unlocked, can save you a lot.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Ok, so when you get bored of chopping. Or decide to try out Apocalypse mode. (Or Zombies). Then here's a couple of turns away from win as Unifier Qin:

 

[kaspergm]

Work Ethics + Scripture usually solves most of my production issues.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Work Ethics + Scripture usually solves most of my production issues.

It really does, especially early on. The only bad thing about it is that it's so easy to set up (minus the pantheon) that it can get quite stale after a while.

 

[kaspergm]

It really does, especially early on. The only bad thing about it is that it's so easy to set up (minus the pantheon) that it can get quite stale after a while.

Indeed, entire meta of the game for me seems to revolve around getting a pantheon that allows for good Holy Site adjacency and securing a Great Prophet. There are some ridiculous synergies centered around this strategy, like Crusades and Hildegard Of Bingen.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Indeed, entire meta of the game for me seems to revolve around getting a pantheon that allows for good Holy Site adjacency and securing a Great Prophet. There are some ridiculous synergies centered around this strategy, like Crusades and Hildegard Of Bingen.

Yeah I always pair up with crusade as well, having the production backbone to pump out units while effectively being a tech level higher is damn strong for early rush purposes. Just curious, do you play on deity? If so, how on earth do you secure Hildegard outside of sheer luck?

 

[kaspergm]

Yeah I always pair up with crusade as well, having the production backbone to pump out units while effectively being a tech level higher is damn strong for early rush purposes. Just curious, do you play on deity? If so, how on earth do you secure Hildegard outside of sheer luck?

No, I only play Immortal, so it's possible. I usually save up a lot of faith when I know some of the crucial great people are approaching so I can poach them with faith.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

No, I only play Immortal, so it's possible. I usually save up a lot of faith when I know some of the crucial great people are approaching so I can poach them with faith.

Ah, I guess its easier then. I tried saving and even getting a fast campus for research grants after securing work ethic, and usually not even that is enough unless im extremely lucky in the order of when the GS appear, and how hard the AI prioritizes them until I have enough banked.
Fantastic great person under the right circumstances.

 

[DeckerdJames]

I will throw in my two cents for whatever it’s worth.

A lot of it is about geography. When you start the game, the first thing I note is whether I have a lot of food or not. If you’re starting on plains then the start is going to be kind of arid and you’re not going to have an over abundance of food. That means you’re not gonna have a lot of quick population growth. And to get production or anything else done you need pop. So starting in the plains is different from starting on grassland.

So number one, is you need citizens.

Here is a method I have come to like. You need to produce a lot of units in the early game. More as you raise the difficulty levels.

Try this method and adjust it as you see fit. You need settlers, military units, and builders as soon as possible.

Capital city, build a scout but try to grow the city to size 2 so you can produce a settler quickly. So if the manager wants to work a 1 food, 3 production wooded hill and grow in 15 turns, while you will produce a scout in 4 or 5 turns, consider manually choosing a tile with 2 food and grow the city in 8 turns and take a couple of extra turns to produce the scout. Then switch back to the 1food, 3production tile to quickly produce the settler. Keep producing settlers.

Meanwhile explore the fresh water areas for a city site with better production for the first couple of citizens. The idea is that you want city 2 and 3 to have some production. Settle on an amenity if possible so that you have no immediate penalty in your first 4 cities.

City 2, start building military units. Warriors and slingers do not cost anything. Slingers are ok, but you really need archers if you have an aggressive army. If you can get away without early archers, just build warriors because they can protect your lands, defeat barbarians, fog bust future city sites, and generally make the first 100 turns a million times easier.

City 3 start building builders. Use your builders to improve your production in your capital for quicker settlers and in city 2and 3 for quicker military and builders.

consider going to craftsmanship right away for the policy card that gives 50% to military unit production (agoge). That will help you get control of your region quicker. Choose between an early pantheon (godking) or 1 production to all cities (urban planning). Once you have 3 cities or more urban planning is good until you have political science and you first government. For further expansion, consider Oligarchy. Two military slots and two economic slots and stronger military units. Use the cards that boost your first three cities, Agoge for 50% military, Ilkum for 30% to builders, and Colonization for 50% to settlers.

In cities 4+ focus on districts and at some point you need to slip in your first districts in cities 1 - 3. Use the governor Pingala to keep your 4x progress going. You need science and culture. Work and improve tiles with those yield where possible. They count the most in the early game but later your districts are most important.

Mid-game you have two main choices for production. Lumber mills with construction and mines which get improved with apprenticeship. Eventually you will have both but there are reasons to head for one or the other at first.

Industrial zones are a long term strategy. Eventually you need electrical power for your third tier building. The industrial zones provide power to cities with 6 tiles, not counting the industrial zone tile, standard distance. Some things can improve that range.

Coal power plants are for maximizing production in the city that it is built in. Oil and Nuclear are for providing regional production bonuses to cities in their range.

When you are setting your cities try to keep the eventual need for electricity in mind, but such a need is a concern far in the future. Your first three cities need immediate production from the geography as do your district building in cities beyond the third.

In later eras, on big maps, you might find the opportunity to claim an island for a colony. In such a case where you already have industrial zones, you might start your first city with the industrial zone with the aim to provide electricity and regional production bonuses to cities that you settle around it.

As for early districts you need 4x yields, science and culture, but you also need an economy, gold. Size one cities take a long time to get going and gold investment in buildings can speed up the development of new cities immensely. That means cities need a harbor or commercial hub. You get a trade route from the lighthouse or market.

If you have a lot of coast, consider harbors. If you are inland, then you need commercial hubs. You can build both economic districts in one city, but you only get 1 extra trade route per city. The governor Reyna can double the adjacency bonus of the harbor and commercial hub so if you plan to take Reyna then a coastal city with both economic buildings can make sense. There are policy cards that double the adjacency yields of both economic districts and eventually a card that doubles both on one card, iirc.

If your economy will be largely coastal, you have an advantage with the policy card Veterancy, 30% to harbor districts and their buildings. The cost of a district goes up each time its type is built. There is an early pantheon choice that gives 25% to a cities first district so if you see you have a lot of coast, consider it. That is a 55% combined savings on a normal civ, but can combine with the advantage of civs that have cheap unique harbors like England.

These are a some specific strategic approaches and will often require adjustments. It may be that you have a very close neighbor and need all cities to produce units for a war. You might start without neighbors on an island and only need military units for fog busting and barbarians.

Good luck!